Television

Television, a media technology, revolutionized all aspects of culture by allowing viewers a window on the world from the comfort of their homes while also offering marketers a direct pipeline into the home. It has been described as a central cultural storyteller, a plug-in drug, and has been accused of functioning as a vehicle for amusing ourselves to death. Although such claims likely do not overexaggerate the cultural significance of television, understanding the precise nature of television's role or influence has remained elusive to those who study it. Nevertheless, the importance of television as related to its role in advancing consumer culture and consumption can hardly be underestimated.

The significance of television as a communication medium was tied at its start to its ubiquity and accessibility. As in the case of radio before it, television technology quickly swept into homes and contributed to massive cultural shifts from public- to domestic-based entertainment. Ownership of a television was rapidly viewed as an essential domestic technology—a development aided by simultaneous [Page 1442]shifts from inner-city, multigenerational dwellings to suburban, nuclear family constructions—particularly in the United States. Although the cost of purchasing a set was considerable, the hours of “free” entertainment (to the degree that advertiser-supported content does not exact a fee for use) offered considerable utility for this initial expense that likely contributed to the medium's rapid adoption. According to Nielsen Media Research, by 1960, 87 percent of U.S. homes owned a television.

Television was introduced and rapidly adopted in most Western industrialized countries following the end of the World War II, although some experiments preceded the war. Its initial adoption and configuration followed a decisively different path in the United States from much of the rest of the world. Following on the norms established at the introduction of radio in the early 1920s, the United States adopted a commercial mandate for its television system, largely turning operation of the medium over to private companies—in this case, those who were running the radio networks—namely NBC and CBS. Western Europe also followed the precedent it had established for radio, but the television system was predominantly organized by a public service mandate supported by tax dollars. The difference of these central goals led to considerable divergence in the early years of the medium in various global contexts. Some 60 years after its introduction, these divergences are much less pronounced, as those national television systems that launched with a public service mandate now overwhelmingly feature “mixed” public and commercial channels. Even U.S. television added a public service system in 1969.

Given the television system's long-standing commercial mandate in the United States, one could say that the promotion of consumption has been a crucial component of television's existence since its origin. Regardless of the economic models that have supported it—which include techniques as varied as sponsorship, the “magazine-format” advertising of multiple advertisers, and product placement—it becomes effectively impossible to separate television programming from the goal of encouraging the consumption of these underwriters' goods and services.

The varied models for advertiser support have led to different norms of the medium. The era in which sponsorship dominated (the dawn of television through the early 1960s) featured far greater program control by the sponsoring company and the advertising agency than the network. Given the considerable sums required for sponsorship and the level of integration between programming and sponsor message, much of this programming sought to advance a particular corporate image or company voice rather than extolling the qualities of a particular good or putting a hard sell on the audience. As corporations spread their advertising budget across commercials inserted in a variety of programming, this messaging strategy gave way to more product appeal–centered approaches—either selling the audience on the characteristics of the good or trying to sell a lifestyle associated with the good. Throughout television history, commercial time in television programming has steadily expanded, and the more recent growth in in-show product placement without any decrease in commercial time has renewed concerns about the amount of overt commercialism that is characteristic of the medium. These concerns involve both worry about the growing commercialism of television as well as distress about the decreased effectiveness of commercial messages in such a heavily saturated environment.

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